Zavvi 2 for £18 Bluray Sale
May 29-June 12
Loads of great Third Window titles are on sale at Zavvi for the next couple weeks, including many from Shinya Tsukamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Sion Sono and more!
https://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray-and-dvd/third-window-films/2-for-18.list
Vimeo-On-Demand
For UK fans, many titles to rent for under £2!
With a lot of you stuck and home, and many issues with supply-chains for delivery of films, we've put up a lot of our titles to rent on our new Vimeo-On-Demand channel. Focusing mainly on titles which are not available on Itunes, Amazon Prime, etc. you'll be able to see a lot of Third Window Films in HD despite many only being released on DVD in the past. Most films are less than £2, so if there's a title you were interested in just checking out before/instead of buying the physical release, then here's your chance!
For those of you in the UK and Ireland, find out more at:
https://vimeo.com/thirdwindowfilms/vod_pages
Legend of the Stardust Brothers
Stardust Brothers come to North America!
One of our very favourite discoveries of Japanese cinema, the long-lost 80s musical THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS is finally available to watch in the US & Canada!
Due to coronavirus, many cinema screenings at various Alamo Drafthouse cinemas nationwide have been postponed, so instead it will be available to rent exclusively on the Alamo On Demand online
Support Alamo cinemas & watch a great, fun film!
https://ondemand.drafthouse.com/film/the-legend-of-the-stardust-brothers/
UK/Ireland customers can watch on our vimeo on demand platform
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/stardustbrothers
German fans can watch via Rapid Eye Movies
https://rapideyemovies.de/2020/03/15/stardust-brothers/
Plus our bluray, DVD & soundtrack Collector's Edition is ALL REGION
https://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/the-legend-of-the-stardust-brothers/
Hanagatami
Out July 6th
In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film HOUSE (HAUSU) was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be his final film he adapted Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella HANAGATAMI, his passion project 40 years in the making.
n 1941, as Japan prepares its attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 year-old Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka) leaves his parents in Amsterdam and moves to the seaside town of Karatsu where his aunt Keiko (Takako Tokiwa) cares for his ailing cousin Mina (Honoka Yahagi). Immersed in the exquisite nature and phenomenal culture of Karatsu, Toshihiko befriends the beautiful, Apollo-like Ukai (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), the contemplative Kira (Keishi Nagatsuka), the ingenuous Akine (Hirona Yamazaki) and the brooding Chitose (Mugi Kadowaki) as they all contend with the war’s inescapable gravitational pull. With the impression of fantasy horror, mesmerizing images and powerful storytelling, “Hanagatami” captures the love, friendship, struggle of the end days of youth in a country consumed by the flames of war.
The first bluray release outside of Japan!
Out July 6th 2020
Bluray special features
Making Of
Interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi
Region B
Special pre-order prices starting from just £13.99!
https://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/hanagatami/
Pink Films Vol 1 -4
Newly remastered Japanese pink films!
Check out the series trailer: https://youtu.be/UNuZfo3uoEM
VOL 3 & 4
Abnormal Family / Blue Film Woman
ABNORMAL FAMILY
変態家族兄貴の嫁さん directed by Masayuki Suo (1984, 63 minutes)
The debut film of the director of the international hit comedy SHALL WE DANCE (1996) follows the Mamiya family after the latest arrival of the voluptuous new bride of over-sexed eldest son Kôichi. Kazuo sees his new sister-in-law as a source of release from study stress, while his sister Akiko, after donning her Office Lady uniform heads straight to a workplace that offers much more in the way of financial incentive. Suo’s only ever pink film is a bawdy pastiche of the works of Ozu Yasujirô, presenting this far-from-typical family through idiosyncratic editing and compositional.
BLUE FILM WOMAN
ブルーフィルムの女 directed by Kan Mukai (1969, 78 minutes)
Blue Film Woman is a feverish mishmash of horror, blackmail sexploitation and trippy nightclub sequences revolving around the daughter of a stockbroker who is brought to his knees by an unexpected financial crash. In order to stave off bankruptcy, he offers up his wife to his sleazy, reptilian creditor Uchiyama who, after prodding and pawing over her, locks her up in the shed at the bottom of the garden where his mentally challenged son Hiroshi lurks in the attic.
DUAL-FORMAT DVD/BLURAY
NEWLY REMASTERED!
Pink Thrills: Jasper Sharp on Pink Eiga – A 35 minute video essay on pink cinema
Region B/2
Now Out
Order links at
https://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/pink-films-vol-3-4/
VOL 1 & 2 BACK IN STOCK
Inflatable Sex Doll of the wasteland / Gushing Prayer
INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS
荒野のダッチワイフ directed by Atsushi Yamatoya (1969, 86 minutes)
Yamatoya's wrote INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS concurrently with his anonymous contribution to the script for Suzuki Seijun's legendary BRANDED TO KILL, released four months earlier. Similarly shot in stunning monochrome scope, it is as hallucinatory, fragmentary and surreal as its companion piece, and stands as a testament to just how flexible the pink film formula could be in its first decade.
GUSHING PRAYER
噴出祈願 十五代の売春婦 directed by Masao Adachi (1971, 74 minutes)
The most cryptic and formally radical pink film from the most politically radical director ever to work in the field: GUSHING PRAYER deploys actual suicide notes and a haunting guitar refrain by folk musician Minami Masato to express the spiritual and political left vacuum in the wake of the failed student movements of the 1960s. The cinematography by Itô Hideo, who also shot Ôshima Nagisha's IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), captures an intriguing melding of the documentary with the cinematic.
ALL REGION
DUAL-FORMAT DVD/BLURAY
NEWLY REMASTERED!
LIMITED NUMBERS LEFT!
Order from the Arrow Films Store
https://www.arrowfilms.com/product-detail/pink-films-vol-1—2-dual-format/TWFBD047
or from Amazon
https://amzn.to/2qRudZE
RENT ALL 4 ON OUR VIMEO PAGE
https://vimeo.com/thirdwindowfilms/vod_pages
SHINYA TSUKAMOTO
3 film set out now out
TSUKAMOTO: KILLING / HAZE / ADVENTURE OF DENCHU KOZO
Third Window Films have been synonymous with Shinya Tsukamoto over the last decade, working personally alongside the master to remaster and release many of his cult classics.
Next up is a 2 disc limited edition bluray box with his latest film KILLING alongside his 2005 film HAZE and his 8mm pre-Tetsuo film THE ADVENTURE OF DENCHU KOZO.
Disc 1
Killing feature
Audio Commentary by Tom Mes
Interview with Shinya Tsukamoto
Trailer
Disc 2
The Adventures of Denchu Kozo (45min)
Haze (48min)
Audio commentaries on both films by Tom Mes
Slipcase
Limited to 1,000 copies
Region B bluray
Now Out
https://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/tsukamoto-killing-haze-denchu-kozo/
Shinya Tsukamoto on Arrow Channels
Sign up and stream!
Explore the work of Shinya Tsukamoto on the Arrow Video Channel
One of the most distinctive and celebrated names in modern Japanese cinema, there’s no other filmmaker quite like Shinya Tsukamoto. Since his early days as a teenager making Super 8 shorts, he has remained steadfastly independent, garnering widespread acclaim while honing his own unique and instantly recognizable aesthetic on the margins of the industry. Frequently exploring themes of urban alienation, physical transformation and psychosexual obsession, his films cross genre boundaries, defying straightforward classification.
Check the Tsukamoto Streaming TRAILER
Arrow channel on Amazon UK
Shinya Tsukamoto on Arrow Itunes UK
BFI Japan Season
100 years of Japanese cinema on BFIplayer
In this major season the BFI spotlight Japanese filmmakers who have inspired admiration and fascination around the world
In this major season on the BFI Player filmmakers who have inspired admiration and fascination around the world are spotlighted. Starting with Akira Kurosawa, and over the coming months presenting films from the Golden Age, a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, new wave rebels, the visionary creations of anime, the netherworlds of J-horror, and so much more from archive rarities to contemporary works and cult classics.
This landmark season will take place on BFI Player from 11 May onwards, with new online collections released each month, and we expect to present it at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide later this year.
A comprehensive look at all the films coming up in the season can be found at
https://windowsonworlds.com/2020/05/04/bfi-japan-2020-to-celebrate-more-than-100-years-of-japanese-cinema/
BFI PLAYER
Discover classic and cult films including exclusive Mark Kermode introductions. Free for 14 days, then £4.99 a month – cancel any time
https://player.bfi.org.uk/japan-2020
Arrow Films
In stark contrast to the monochrome naturalism of his earlier masterwork Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, visionary master director Tomu Uchida took inspiration from Bunraku and kabuki theater for arguably his strangest and most lavishly cinematic film, The Mad Fox.
OUT JUNE 26th
Finally available outside Japan for the first time, Uchida’s stunning, wildly stylised widescreen tableaux – using expressionist sets and colour schemes – are highlighted in a world premiere Blu-ray™ release.
https://www.arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-mad-fox-blu-ray/FCD1996
An infectiously funny slice of modern Korean cinema where Train to Busan, The Quiet Family and Warm Bodies collide to create a memorable rom-zom-com from first time director Lee Min-jae.
OUT JULY 7th
With a cabbage-munching zombie who prefers ketchup over blood, and a dysfunctional family that gives the Kim family of Parasite a run for their money, Zombie for Sale will warm the deadest of hearts and breathe some new life into the zombie genre.
https://www.arrowfilms.com/product-detail/zombie-for-sale-blu-ray/FCD2018
Exploitation legend Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men, Orgies of Edo) delivers one of his most extreme visions of violent eroticism in this, the sixth in his abnormal love series. Tattoos and torture await women forced into servitude in Ishii's Inferno of Torture.
OUT JULY 7th
Following Ishii's legendary Shogun's Joy of Torture and Orgies of Edo, the prolific filmmaker still manages to turn up the heat in this incredibly violent and salacious entry in a filmography unlike any other. From the film's opening scene depicting some of the most perverse violence ever captured on screen, through to the shock ending that will leave the audience's mouths agape, there's nothing quite like Inferno of Torture. Tender romance clashes with vile sadism as a sea of tattooed female flesh floods nearly every frame of this film depicting Japan's Edo period as only Ishii could.
https://www.arrowfilms.com/product-detail/inferno-of-torture-blu-ray/FCD2004
Terracotta Distribution
Watch Online!
Our friends at Terracotta distribution have started to put a lot of their titles available to rent through their website! Check them out at
http://www.terracottadistribution.com/
Korean Cinema
Watch Online for free
The Korean Film Festival have made some of their 2020 programme available on the KCCUK YouTube channel, including 1962 Berlin Film Festival special jury prize winner To The Last Day: https://bit.ly/KoreanFilmNights.
Upcoming films include 2013 Sundance winning Jiseul, live from Fri 5 June, 6pm!